Fire destruction And Loss Of Life Caused By TX Gov Rick Perry’s Budget Cuts Should Be Criminal

My mother always told me you can be penny wise and dollar foolish. It is OK to make fiscal mistakes when it involves your own family. In said eventuality results of ineptitude is restricted to the family unit.

When you are tasked with protecting a state, protecting citizen’s livelihood, and protecting citizen’s property, fiscal mistakes can have devastating results. When fiscal mistakes are really no mistake at all but based on a provably evil ideology, fiscal mistakes that cause the lives of citizens and the loss of property should be considered criminal.

In that light I think Rick Perry has criminally allowed our state’s budget to cause material harm to its citizens. As Rick Perry runs for president we must visibly, vocally, and in writings inform America that they do not want Rick Perry to do to America what he is currently doing to Texas. Moreover we must stress his “civil’” criminality inasmuch as no American legal entity would persecute.

WASHINGTON — In Texas, firefighters aren’t just battling the wild fires raging around Austin and Houston. The state’s first responders have also had to deal with budget cuts affecting everything from fuel purchases to hoses and oxygen tanks.

In some cases, fire officials say, firefighters have had to pay out of pocket for basic necessities like proper protective gear and fuel to get them to the scene. One fire department that battled the blazes in Bastrop County had to pay for a hose, recalled Bastrop City Fire Chief Henry Perry, speaking to The Huffington Post during a break from working the wild fires.

"That fire department has been on this fire every day," he said. "Before this fire, they were having to buy stuff out of their own pocket." Perry said he knows of at least one other department whose firemen had to pay for equipment maintenance and engine fuel.

Earlier this week, HuffPost reported that Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP front-runner for president, had signed off on millions in firefighting cuts as part of the state’s most recent budget legislation. The Texas Forest Service’s funding has gone from $117.7 million in the 2010-2011 budget years to $83 million in the 2012-2013 budget years.

Severe cuts have also hit assistance grants to volunteer fire departments throughout Texas. The grants decreased from $30 million per year in 2010 and 2011 to $13.5 million per year in 2012 and 2013. These are cuts that firemen are now dealing with.

"I don’t agree with it. I understand what Governor Perry did," said Henry Perry (no relation). "Do I like it? No. I don’t like it at all."

The cuts come at a time when Texas fire departments have already been slowing purchases of new fire trucks and other critical equipment as a way to save money, said Guy Turner, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters. The association had endorsed Perry in his re-election for governor in 2010.

"What I fear will happen is equipment will start to fail and put our members at peril," Turner explained. "You can imagine if you’re inside a structure fire and your engine quits."

Turner doesn’t have to imagine it. He said he knows of firefighters whose breathing apparatus has malfunctioned during fires. There have also been "instances of hoses failing during the course of firefighting operations."

"For years, public safety was the golden calf — that we were untouchable," Turner said. "Nobody’s untouchable. It is a shame. They are basically putting a price on how much our lives are worth. It’s disturbing at best."…[CONTINUED]

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